boodlefoof

There are a number of companies that make kits for pinion mount emergency brakes. It offers a simple and compact setup and I plan to go that route with my Z. Not sure if there are direct bolt-in kits for the Z though. http://www.tperformance.com/street_rod_store/emergency_brakes/pinion-mounted_emergency_brake_kit/

A few more. Third gen Camaro 80s - early 90s Mustang

I'm digging the sheep skin seat cover.

Round tube will save some weight over square (because there is less material there), but square is much easier to work with. Tube80z - I used mostly 2x2x.095'' for my non-hoop main pieces and some .065'' for diagonals and other pieces without suspension attachment points. For non-structural body supports I went with 1x1x.065''. You're right that the .120'' is probably overkill... I suggested it to be on the upper end of safety. Would hate to have somebody just cut off the front snout, lay down two parallel rails of .095'' with no other support and then wonder why the thing bent all to hell when they hit a pothole. In total, I'm estimating that my frame (with cage) will come to a little over 300 pounds. After having cut away all of the unibody construction, I think I will actually not have put on any weight. I'm estimating a final curb weight of around 2000 pounds (hopefully less).

C6 'Vette: 1.699

Glad to see another person with the desire to get his hands dirty! The 140 will have adequate power to weld the gauge of steel you will need to use to make your frame. With any welding project though, pay close attention to joint preparation and you will be fine. Practice on some scraps first. As for building a front frame for the car, you will be able to save a lot of money and headaches by using square and rectangular tubing rather than round tube. Prices for square tube are typically less than half of ERW round and probably about a quarter of the price of DOM. Then, you can avoid the cost of buying a tubing bender and/or tubing notcher and just make straight cuts in the square steel tube. For materials, mild steel will be the easiest to work and learn with. To be safe, go with .120'' wall tubing (2x2'' square is very versitile). Perhaps use a pair of 2x3'' main rails and build up from there. If you pay attention to frame design, you can use some thinner wall tubing, but anything with a suspension pickup on it should probably not go below .095'' and even then should be reinforced. Start by designing your suspension (if you're going through the trouble of building a new frame from scratch, you don't want to finish it and end up with bad suspension geometry). Then, design your frame around the suspension. Pay attention to the load paths in your frame and your attachment points. Building the best front snout in the world will not make any improvement if it isn't (1) attached securely to the rest of the car and (2) attached squarely to the rest of the car. The firewall isn't particularly strong, so sending loads from the front frame into the firewall isn't the best idea without some form of reinforcement. Door bars can be used (as 7.0_5L_Z has). Good luck. I look forward to hearing of your progress. You can check out my web page for some information about building a spaceframe for a Z.

It is always sad to see a nice car trashed, but I must say that Eddie's response was pretty funny! Also... in the video did anyone notice the guy on the cell phone standing right behind the wall who had absolutely no reaction to the car skidding towards him? He didn't even flinch! I'm also kind of surprised he put it into the wall like that. It didn't seem that he was going very fast to so completely lose steering control.

Before you go pulling it apart, I would run it and see how it does. Are you certain you aren't mistaken about that compression ratio though?

May also want to check out Lunati's "Voodoo" series of cams. I frequent an old Camaro forum and there are a number of people who have been pleased with those. With the vortec heads' relatively "weak" exhaust port, a split-patterned cam (with more exhaust duration) will likely be beneficial. The XE cams are a split-patterned cam as well. I'm running a 10:1 355 with the Comp XE274 and must say that my seat-of-the-pants test has me pleased. It is borderline for vacuum and power accessories, but it really comes on around 2500rpm and keeps pulling up to my self-imposed 6500rpm redline. I'm not using the Vortec heads though, so I can't comment about how well those would support the upper end.

Lookin' sharp!

Do you mean, what do you use to support the fiberglass part once it is laid-up? If you're worried about your 'glass distorting, you could always make some "ribs" on the backside. I think this is what you are describing. Cut some strips of foam, lay them on the backside and then lay fiberglass cloth over them to create a rib. How many layers and what weight of cloth did you use to make the body panel itself and how are you mounting it? If attaching all the way around its perimeter and using enough cloth you may not need to reinforce it with ribs.

Looking good. Can't wait to see the pics of the laid 'glass.

Diggin' those seat covers.

Always keep it on the track. Your story is a very sad one and shows the worst of what can happen when street racing. I am sorry to hear that it happened. Many people don't realize that there are many other down-sides to street racing as well. It creates a prejudice against the car hobby, raises everyone's insurance rates, induces further regulation of hot-rodding, and as shown above... kills people.

I will be using aluminum paneling throughout on my 240-Z project. If you consider the difference in weight between 20ga steel (1.5 pounds/sq.ft.) versus .050'' aluminum (.7 pounds/sq.ft.) you'll save about 20 pounds for a 25 sq.ft. floor (assuming no additional bracing). I'm also doing the firewalls, rear deck, fenderwells, etc. all in aluminum and had estimated that when I was done I would save about 60 pounds. I plan to use rivets and a bead of 3M 5200 adhesive (it is made for boats). A lot of the kit-car guys use this to affix aluminum body panels on GT40s, Cobras and such.

I don't mean to be a downer, but they may be insuring you so cheaply because the policy is a "stated value" policy and their depreciation table shows the 85 ZX to not be very valuable cash-wise. That means that any damage over the value they place on the car (maybe $1-2k), they just deem it totaled and give you their estimated "value." For example, I can get my very nice '68 Camaro "insured" for about $25 every six months on some policies... but they state the value of the car at only around $1,500. Practically any fender-bender and they would call it totaled.

I think I may have read about this place (or if not, then something similar) in Auto Restorer Magazine a few weeks back. They were talking about a neighborhood that was being built out on a large acerage lot (I think it was SC or GA) that would have its own 4 or 5 mile road course!

Scott, what kind of Civic are you driving that is getting 50mpg? (I'm asking because I want something cheap getting 50mpg!) Between my wife and my in-laws they've had about 5 90-95 Civics in the past few years and the best of them got about 45 mpg (a '94 VX 5-speed). The others all average around 30-35 mpg. You would think that since you could buy a 30mpg car 30 years ago we would have made a lot more progress by now...

Did you fill the torque converter with ATF before installing? I have been told that failure to do so can toast the converter.

The "Thunderbird" 390 was standard issue on the Galaxy 500. Rated at 300 horsepower.

Come on guys. To each his own. If I posted a picture of a Monet some people would like it and others wouldn't. One thing that makes this site great is that people don't jump all over each other for every difference of opinion. Let's keep it that way.

There are companies that make 200-4R and 700-R4 kits, complete with rebuilt trans, converter, cooler, etc to bolt onto a Gen I small block and plug into your hot rod for about $1,500.

Without intending to mean anything either way about the quality of the build, what tech inspection rules will the car be subject to? I don't see an external electrical kill switch.

Other Project: '68 Chevy Camaro Daily Drivers for me and the wife: '96 Honda Accord, '94 Honda Civic. Kind of boring, but they are cheap and get pretty good mileage.

Having the roll center above ground isn't necessarily bad and in fact it can be good to some extent. Raising the roll center will help the car to resist roll. However, when you raise the RCH too much, you will experience jacking. From what I have read and from conversations with people much more knowledgeable on the topic than I, this typically doesn't occur (at least in to any noticable extent in a street car) until RCH is on the order of 10'' above ground or more. When you lower RCH, you will need to increase sway bar rate to maintain roll resistance. In my setup (which probably will not hit the street for 2-3 years yet), I'm running an SLA front suspension with an RCH of about 2.5 inches.